Interbane wrote:Flann wrote:
Do you think this is due to their genetic make-up? Do you know of studies that definitively prove this as causal?
Definitive? Probably not. Highly suggestive though. Here is one of many examples:
http://www.livescience.com/47288-twin-s ... etics.html
Thanks Interbane for the interesting article.
I'll have to study it more with the links provided there. To zero in on the point you made about religious beliefs or the lack thereof.
Here's a quote from the article;" A study in 1990 found that genetics account for 50 percent of the religiosity among the population. In other words both identical twins raised apart were more likely to be religious or to be not religious,compared with unrelated individuals."
50 percent of religiosity or non religiosity accounted for by genetics in the studied twin population is very high. I haven't seen that study so am taking it on trust that this is a correct conclusion from all the factors that could have been involved.I would ask what the beliefs or otherwise of the adoptive parents were and whether this was included in the study.
This would be significant when studying these things.
If true it brings me back to my original point that if genetics is such a big factor in belief or non belief this seems to undermine the idea that truth can be objectively known. We may think something is true or important because we are genetically inclined that way.
This also suggests that it goes beyond the more trivial such as fashion tastes since it involves belief in God,atheism and political views(if these are also shown) which involve moral and societal issues which are serious.
We would also have to consider phenomena such as conversion to belief or non belief.
For such individuals it would boil down to what point in their lives they were surveyed and the result would be different at another time.
Would it indicate that at one time this person was more genetically inclined one way and at another time genetically inclined another way? That couldn't be surely.We could postulate other influences or ideas being stronger than the genetic inclination.
I'm extrapolating here from twins to people generally taking the premise as reasonable from the study.
Anyway I'll have a closer look at the article and links.